You probably know the image of a mushroom with a bright red cap adorned with little white spots. That’s because this depiction of a mushroom seems like it’s out of an old fairy tale or, these days, a Nintendo game. But this fantastical mushroom does in fact exist in the real world; it’s known as an amanita muscaria, or more commonly as the fly agaric. And amongst the mycology community — the one concerned with the study of fungi — this mushroom has been deemed poisonous, regardless of how whimsical it looks.